Homely launches new brand positioning ‘More than real estate’ in national marketing campaign.

MELBOURNE – October 29, 2021

Australia’s fast-growing property portal, Homely.com.au, has launched its new brand positioning ‘More than real estate’ with a multi-channel campaign via a number of key media partners.

The national campaign went live across multiple channels earlier this month, including out of home through oOh! media, radio with Nova and ARN network and Mamamia.com.au. The portal also launched paid social, programmatic and direct display campaigns across the country.

Homely.com.au, the largest industry-backed portal, also produced a number of YouTube and pre-roll videos to highlight the portal’s value proposition: to make the home buying process easier for people looking to find their perfect place to call home. 

The portal has a number of product offerings that support this, including suburb and street reviews from real locals, local community discussions and a local agent finder. The portal also produced bumper videos promoting their new Alerts and Collections features; the latest in a range of new digital products designed to help people find relevant listings faster, as well as rate and share their favourite properties with loved ones. 

Homely’s Head of Marketing, Amanda Kramer, says, “There’s never been a more exciting and yet daunting time to buy property in Australia. The process of finding that ‘perfect’ home isn’t always easy for a myriad of reasons. We know that women tend to make 90%+ of the home buying decisions. When you look at the online and offline processes that unfortunately tend to be harder than they should be, plus overlay everything else that’s going on, the mental load is real for many people with a lot on their plates.”

Kramer continues, “What sets Homely apart in the industry is something we love singing about: our business is genuinely designed to help make it easier for people to find their perfect next home. Our site is ad-free, clutter-free and beautifully simple to use; we offer suburb, street reviews and local Q&A discussions that help make it easier for people to find information about the neighbourhoods they’re interested in before they inspect properties; and we build considered products – such as our Alerts and Collections – that are designed to take the stress out of the home finding process. Everything we do for our users respects this purpose of making it easier for them.” 

Homely is the largest industry-backed real estate portal in Australia and provides much-needed competition when it comes to the online real estate industry. As the portal continues to grow quarter on quarter, consumer awareness is key. 

“We’ve been operating since 2014, but we’re a new brand when it comes to our property-seeking consumers,” says Kramer. “Our goal for this campaign was to kickstart some momentum through impact, reach and frequency. Firstly, we made our brand assets more distinctive, then we worked with some fantastic media partners to find high impact opportunities that reached our ideal audience segment as often as we could.”

With most capital cities in lockdown during the industry’s busiest time of the year, the traditional spring selling period looked very different around the country. In Victoria, one of Homely’s largest territories, inspections were not permitted at all, while in NSW inspections were restricted to one-on-ones only. Homely used this state-based fragmentation to trial out a bolder media strategy, underpinned by a digital investment to drive awareness for those stuck at home. Queensland emerged from lockdowns earlier and so was selected for out of home media and radio partnerships to capture people on the go.

“This campaign was designed to hit the right audience at the right time, and we put a lot into our targeting to do this,” said Kramer. “We worked closely with our media partners to achieve the results we were after. We’re already seeing great results including increases in enquiries, earned media and an uplift in user generated content submissions on the site. Nationally, we worked to a targeted, relevant digital approach that erred on the side of native and matched our audience needs. Our content partnership with Mamamia was an example of this working particularly well.”

Adam Spencer, CEO and co-Founder of Homely says, “We’re excited for this next phase of growth in the business. Our proposition is strong and we have a number of products in the pipeline to continue to support our position as a force for good in the industry.”

“Our new positioning ‘More than Real Estate’ is a proud reflection of our value proposition, our enduring commitment to our customers and users, and ultimately is what pushes us every day to constantly challenge the industry standard. We’re just getting started.”

About Homely

Homely was founded in 2014 by brothers Jason and Adam Spencer in Melbourne, Australia. Since then, Homely has grown to become a large team of passionate developers, sales managers, account managers, marketers, designers and customer support people across Victoria, NSW, Queensland, WA and South Australia. Homely.com.au is unique in that the portal is not not only ad-free and uncluttered for an optimal experience. It also offers a proprietary suburb and street review service, designed to make it faster, easier and friendlier for buyers and their agents to find the perfect place to call home. A key feature of the platform allows agents themselves to not only list homes, but review streets and suburbs in their local areas. The Homely experience is so much more than buying and selling. It’s about connecting and empowering consumers with the knowledge they need about what life is like in areas they’re thinking about moving to. Homely partners with agents and the real estate industry to deliver an alternative and affordable industry-backed real estate portal. The Homely app is available for download on the App Store and Google Play. Learn more about Homely here.